Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy...
Submissive to everything, open, listening...
Something that you feel will find its own form.
--Jack Kerouac, from "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose"

July 26, 2005

Do Less Better

The best thing you can do to succeed in internal martial arts is to take the primary technique of the art you do...and really practice that technique to death, ad infinitum. Not like an unfeeling mindless machine, but more like a musician playing chords until you really get what it is. It's going to be from that foundation that your natural creativity, talent, ability, and insight are going to truly emerge. As my first Ba Gua teacher Wang Shu Jin used to say, "It is better to do one technique well than ten thousand poorly."